


my life and thousands more

by starlight_sugar



Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 07:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11375454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlight_sugar/pseuds/starlight_sugar
Summary: She doesn’t have the right to forge any kind of relationship, and she’s well aware of it. And while she refuses to feel guilty about what she did, she doesn’t exactly feel good about it either. (Lucretia, and the time alone.)





	my life and thousands more

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: This is a work by a fan for fans, not affiliated with MaxFun or the McElroys.  
> Content warnings: Canonical character deaths.  
> Canon notes: Canon-compliant, takes place between Stolen Century and Gerblins.
> 
> Title comes from [Winifred](https://sethboyer.bandcamp.com/track/winifred) by Seth Boyer.

Lucretia keeps tabs, afterwards, on Merle and Magnus and Taako. It’s the least she can do, after everything. She keeps track from a distance and she never intends to visit, she really doesn’t - she doesn’t have the right to forge any kind of relationship, and she’s well aware of it. And while she refuses to feel guilty about what she did, she doesn’t exactly feel good about it either, so the distance is a luxury that she forces herself to afford.

But then - there are rumors that make their way up to her, about some kind of unrest in Raven’s Roost. And it could just be politics, but it could be a relic, and besides, an excuse to visit is an excuse to visit.

And so she goes to Raven’s Roost. She walks through town, through shops, down the Craftsmen’s Corridor, turns and finds herself in a town square. There’s a woman, standing on the edge of a fountain, shouting; Lucretia can barely hear her over the roar of the crowd surrounding her. And there are soldiers posted all along the edge of the square, but the woman ignores them all, brandishing her fist in the air.

There is no relic here. Lucretia can tell as much. But she owes it to Magnus to be sure that he’s safe, and she wants to hear what’s going on in the world besides. So she steps closer to the woman.

“-can’t treat us like this,” the woman shouts, and the crowd yells back their agreement. “We pay our taxes! We treat this city with love, and he tries to tell us we haven’t done our civic duty! But no more! We can’t live under Kalen anymore!”

The soldiers begin to stir. Lucretia reaches into her robes for a wand - a spare she hadn’t expected to need, but she’s glad she has it with her.

The woman doesn’t pay the soldiers any mind. “Raven’s Roost deserves to be free! We all deserve freedom from tyranny!”

“That’s enough, Waxmen,” one of the soldiers says.

“We deserve freedom!” Waxmen shouts one more time, and the crowd roars their agreement so loudly that Lucretia almost doesn’t notice as Waxmen steps down from the edge of the fountain and slips into the crowd. It’s almost impressive, how quickly she goes from revolutionary to citizen. Lucretia watches her as she moves through the people, tying her hair up as she goes, pushing her sleeves back down. Small changes, but enough to throw off anyone who had just seen her. Enough to buy her time.

Waxmen breaks free from the crowd and slips out of the square, moving towards Craftsmen’s Corridor. One of the soldiers starts after her, sword in hand, and Lucretia decides - well. She can’t let a revolution end like this.

She catches up with Waxmen easily. “That was quite the speech, Miss Waxmen,” she says, voice low.

Waxmen glances at her, one eyebrow arched. “Can I help you, ma’am?”

“Oh, I’m just an inspired traveler passing through.” Lucretia moves her robes enough to show Waxmen her wand. “You can help me by letting an old wizard walk you home.”

“I’m being followed,” she guesses. Irritation flickers across her face, and she picks up her pace, but she sighs. “I won’t say no, if it makes you feel better.”

“It does,” Lucretia says. It’s nice to be doing actual good, not just bureaucratic good from afar. “I’m afraid I didn’t catch your first name.”

“Julia.” She doesn’t slow her stride as she turns down Craftsmen’s Corridor. “And I didn’t hear yours, either, o travelling wizard.”

Lucretia opens her mouth, unsure of what’s going to come out of it until the exact moment she says, “Tesseralia.”

“Tessa Ralia,” Julia repeats. “I hope you heard something worth hearing today.”

“I’d say I did,” Lucretia answers. “You’re inspiring these people. I’m afraid I’m not so familiar with what’s going on in Raven’s Roost, but it seems like you’re doing good.”

Julia smiles at that, there and gone in an instant. “That’s all I can ask for. It’s nice to hear it from someone else, though.” She stops in front of a shop with a sign that reads Hammer and Tongs. The soldier from before is nowhere to be seen. “Thank you, Tessa.”

“Thank you, Julia,” Lucretia says. “May your war end well.”

“And yours.” Julia takes a look at her and laughs; Lucretia can’t imagine how her face must look. “Oh, come on, I can tell a fighter when I see one. Whatever you’re doing, I hope you do it with honor.”

Lucretia doesn’t know where the honor is in anything the Bureau of Balance has done, but she forces herself to nod anyways. “Thank you.” And she turns to leave, and-

“Jules!” someone shouts, and Lucretia can’t process the horror and the joy she feels before she sees Magnus, leaning out the window of the Hammer and Tongs. “Do we have company? Does she wanna come in?”

“Fiancees. Always excited,” Julia says dryly, and Lucretia can’t breathe. Of course. If anyone could love Magnus the way he deserved, it would be a spirited revolutionary. “Did you want to come in, Tessa? I’m sure we could scrape together dinner for one more.”

“I’m afraid I must be on my way,” some part of Lucretia answers, the one that makes her a director rather than a record-keeper. “But I wish you both well.”

Julia smiles warmly. “Thank you. Safe travels.”

“Juuuules,” Magnus whines. “Is she coming in?”

Julia turns back to Magnus. “Tessa has to be on her way, love,” she says, and starts towards the door. “She’s only passing through.”

And Magnus - god, of course, Magnus turns to Lucretia. “Tessa! Thank you for keeping my beautiful, perfect fiancee company tonight.”

“Mags,” Julia laughs.

Magnus disappears from the window only to open the door a heartbeat later. He’s still looking at Lucretia. Not scrutinizing, not recognizing. Just looking at a stranger. “Do you need anything? Supplies for the road?”

“I should be good,” The Director answers. “But thank you for the offer.”

“Of course.” Magnus waves at her. “Safe travels!”

“Thank you,” The Director says, waves back, leaves. She gets to the far outskirts of Raven’s Roost before she uses her bracer to summon a sphere from the Bureau. And Lucretia waits until she’s safely inside to bury her head in her hands and sob.

 

#

 

Lucas insists that she accompany him to Neverwinter on some kind of a supply run. She thinks more because he wants her there than out of any necessity, and that alone is touching enough that she agrees. She lets him talk to her about wires and conductors and things that were far enough over her head when it was Barry talking, let alone when it’s Lucas who’s miles beyond her.

And it, like with Magnus, is a complete accident when she hears it: Merle laughing. She turns to it instinctively, whirling around, searching the people in the street.

“Uh, Lucretia?” Lucas says, and she snaps back into herself. He’s looking at her oddly. “You okay?”

“A little tired,” she admits, because Lucas would accept no less than the truth. “I thought I heard something.”

“Bad something?”

There’s no good answer to that. Would it be so bad, seeing Merle again? Could it possibly be good?

Luckily, before she can answer, Lucas groans. “Ugh, I left my wallet on the counter, I’ll be right back.” And he slips into the store they came from, leaving Lucretia in the crowded Neverwinter street.

She takes a slow, deep breath. And then she hears it: Merle saying, with a clear laugh in his voice, “Okay, fine. But don’t tell your mom.”

“If we can’t tell Mom, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” another voice says, dry in the same way Merle’s is. And Lucretia turns a little further and there they are: Merle and two kids, a girl on one side and boy on the other, both gazing up at him the way a child looks at a father.

“It’s just candy,” Merle scoffs. “What’s she gonna do, make you un-eat it?”

The girl, the older of the two, smiles. “I guess she can’t do that,” she says, long-suffering. The boy doesn’t say anything: he is, Lucretia realizes with a start, looking directly at her. It only lasts for a second before his eyes pass to the next stranger in the crowd. Merle doesn’t look twice at her. And why would he? Lucretia cut herself out of his life so neatly that there’s not even scar tissue.

“God,” Lucretia whispers. Someone might hear her. She doesn’t think she particularly cares. Her stomach is rolling with something too selfish to be called guilt. “ _ God. _ ”

“Got it!” Lucas says from her side. He’s holding his wallet in his hand, and a shopping bag that definitely wasn’t there a moment ago.

“Did you buy something?” Lucretia asks, startled.

Lucas immediately averts his eyes. “Maybe? There wasn’t a line.”

Lucretia shakes her head. Merle and the kids are gone when she dares to look where they were standing. “Maybe I should be in charge of your wallet,” she jokes. “It’d save you some money.”

Lucas barks out a laugh. “Yeah, maybe,” he agrees. “Let’s go, we need to get to the apothecary before sundown.”

“Let’s go,” Lucretia echoes, and it still feels raw as she leaves.

 

#

 

Maureen buys her an official licensed Sizzle It Up! cookbook for her birthday. Lucretia, thankfully, laughs until she cries, rather than the other way around.

 

#

 

She hears about Raven’s Roost first. It’s unavoidable. A Regulator comes back to the base one day looking sorely shaken and says that the city burned to the ground, and that the revolutionary leader Burnsides barely survived. That he was the only one.

Lucretia looks through her journals that night, the ones that she keeps under two different locks. Magnus’s escapades could’ve filled half a dozen journals on their own; combined with everyone else’s stories, there are nearly twenty books to look through before she finds the one she’s thinking of.

_ Cycle 43, _ it reads, in crisp script at the top of the page.  _ The war is still raging on this island. Magnus has declared himself the protector of the daycare. He says that it’s a shame that nobody else has bothered taking care of the children, that he’ll do it himself if he has to. It’s incredibly fitting of him. He says there’s no point in finding the Light of Creation if everyone on this plane dies while we’re searching for it. _

And then, scrawled below, almost illegibly:

_ Hi Lucretia I’m sorry I stole your journal but thanks for making me sound like some kind of a hero! It’s cool. :D But protecting people who need it isn’t heroic. It’s just the right thing to do. <3 -Magnus _

She has it memorized by now, every word, every letter, the way he hooks his g’s. She reads it again, and again, and again.

Julia Waxmen was a hero. She was a protector. And she certainly isn’t still alive.

“Am I protecting you?” she asks, maybe aloud, maybe not quite. There are teardrops on her sleeve; she was careful, once she realized she was crying, about not letting them on the pages. “Am I?”

 

#

 

When she hears about Glamour Springs she immediately scrawls the right information on a paper and runs to Fisher’s chamber, as fast as she can. Johann isn’t there, it would be so easy to fix this, nobody would know-

_ Taako would know, _ says a voice in her head that sounds uncomfortably like Lup’s.  _ If you ever brought him here and inoculated him like he planned, he would remember what happened. You can’t do that to him. _

“I’ve done too much already,” Lucretia whispers. “I’ve meddled so much, what’s one more? Feed this one to Fisher and move on, he can move on-”

_ Lucy, _ not-quite-Lup sighs.

“This was supposed to be the right thing,” she says. She holds up her hand to Fisher’s tank, and he lifts a tentacle, star-sparkling in the ichor. “Do you miss them?”

Fisher lets out a low, mournful note.

“So do I,” Lucretia says. “Will they forgive me?”

Fisher sings out one more time. It’s a different note than the last one. Lucretia can’t tell if that’s supposed to mean a different answer, or if it means that she’s talking to a fish because none of her friends know her anymore.

She looks back at the paper in her hand, now crumpled. She doesn’t know what could’ve happened in Glamour Springs. Taako doesn’t make mistakes while cooking. He had, once, just once, a couple of cycles in. Merle had gotten food poisoning and Taako had complained relentlessly about it ruining his perfect record, old man, why’d you have to go and get sick? And he’d taken care of Merle, figuring out how to make and transmute medicine, and Lup had been the only one to cook for the rest of the cycle. And now forty people are dead and Taako - he must be dying too, he must be swearing off cooking or travelling or something. It makes Lucretia sick.

“It was supposed to be better like this,” she tells Fisher, who sings out one more time.

She returns to her quarters and burns the paper and thinks, over and over,  _ this was supposed to be better. _ But maybe there is no better. Maybe this is as good as it could’ve been.

 

#

 

It’s a sentimental day. She knows this because she’s looking at the portrait - the real portrait, the one with the seven of them together. There are things about it that she’s not sure anymore if they’re mistakes or if she’s misremembering - the exact curve of Lup’s smile, the shape of Barry’s glasses, the way Merle looks when he’s laughing. The light in Davenport’s eyes.

“Oh, Captain,” she sighs, almost punched out of her, and then, she hears a noise from behind her. When she turns Davenport is there, stock-still

“What?” he says. His eyes are filled with tears. “What is that? What is that?”

Lucretia waves a hand, and the portrait goes back to normal. “Davenport,” she says sharper than she intended. “Are you-”

“Couldn’t see.” He clutches at his head, and Lucretia is in front of him in a heartbeat, hands hovering. This is her captain, this is her ward, this is her  _ friend _ and she’s not sure what he is in this moment. “I couldn’t- why couldn’t I- Davenport, Davenport-”

“Shhh, shh.” Lucretia lowers one hand to stroke against the back of his head and he crumples against her with a sob. “Davenport, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Blank,” Davenport says, his shoulders lurching. “Blank, empty, empty, couldn’t see-”

It hits Lucretia in an instant. He couldn’t look at the portrait because he couldn’t remember any of it. Maybe there were pieces he could see, just enough to know that he couldn’t see them. Just enough to know something was very, very wrong.

Davenport keeps hiccupping against her. She pulls him closer and breathes deep. “I’m sorry,” she says again, and the worst part is she’s not even sure if she is.

She starts locking the door when she looks at the portrait, after that.

 

#

 

The three of them are standing in her office for the first time, looking up at her like she’s a stranger, and one they’re afraid of at that. Lucretia thinks,  _ you used to be my closest friends. _ Lucretia thinks,  _ I have shaped you all and I am sorry for it. _ Lucretia thinks,  _ I can’t accept their employment, I can’t ask them to work for me, I can’t ask them to stay. _

And she opens her mouth, and asks just that.

**Author's Note:**

> you can say hi on Tumblr or Twitter @waveridden - thanks for reading!


End file.
